Falling
by waitingforepiphany
Summary: John is haunted by memories, plagued with the pain of his past. An alternate beginning to Series 3. I own nothing.


_The chatter of gunfire. Dripping flames from a smoldering Afghan sun. Grit a constant blinding sting in his eyes, crunching between his teeth, scouring his face._

_Unwelcome fear creeping ice into his veins, driving his heart to madness in its beating. A sudden flowering agony, brought to excruciating half-speed – please, God, let me live._

_Hot blood steaming, vibrant on suncursed sand._

_Hot blood streaming, vibrant among matted curls. Hot blood spilling, tracking past mistyglass eyes no longer blazing. Hot blood pooling, staining rain-painted pavement. A numbed horror paralyzing. No._

_Please, God –_

John wakes to the clinking of rain against a dull window. His heart – _driven to madness in its beating_ – settles as a gray-pocked ceiling comes into focus.

_Flying – no, __**falling**__ –_

No.

John chokes back the bitter remnants of nightmare that threaten to strangle him. Grumbling, he scrubs a jittery hand across his eyes. His skull is bursting at the seams. His shoulder twinges in remembered pain.

_Falling_.

Her heat, her presence, is an embrace. Mary sighs out a breath, curled tight against the chill that raises goose bumps on her exposed skin. He turns to her, eyes straining in the faint rainglowing light, and counts the pale eyelashes shadowed against her cheek in time to his stilling heart. John traces her jawline with a featherlight touch, with a hand that no longer trembles. Softly, softly - his fingers comb through the silk of her hair flung across the shadowspattered pillow. Her breath caresses him, sweet against his face.

He knows when she wakes. A hint of movement in her eyes, her mouth. A great intake of breath, her limbs shifting in a hushed rustle beneath the sheets. The lines around her eyes deepen. Then suddenly she is still again, her breathing carefully rhythmic, her face carefully smooth. The grin breaks unexpectedly across his face. John scrapes his stubble-shadowed cheek against her carefully still one; she squeaks in protest and he mumbles a ticklish "Morning," against her ear. Lingering dreams of hot blood against pallid skin fade with the press of her smile on his pulse.

Mary watches him as he dresses. She knows he tries to hide it, the stiffness in his leg. She sees the half-aborted movements, the creases in his face carved deep and hard. She sees the circles of darkness like bruises under his eyes. _A bad night_. Mary sees how he needs to remind himself where the door is even though they have been sharing this flat for months now. Mary knows he remembers a different flat – a wall studded with bullet holes; a kitchen with eyeballs in the microwave and a head in the fridge; a skull perched on the mantle. She knows. It surrounds him, it haunts him in the night – the fall, the chaos, the blood. The memory of Sherlock Holmes.

"What the _hell_ are you doing?" John shouted through the cracks of gunfire, overwhelming and close and a sound that should _not_ have been coming from his flat.

Sherlock sprawled in his armchair, John's gun held in a careless grip. A freshly painted smiley face on the wall now contained several bullet holes.

"Bored." Sherlock grumbled it, low, deep, and dissatisfied.

"What?"

"Bored!" He rose from his seat. "Bored! Bored!" the crack of the gun harsh punctuation to his words. Chips of plaster exploded from the wall.

John took the gun from him, unloaded it. Sherlock didn't seem to care. He savagely ruffled his dark curls and regarded the smiling face on the wall with contempt. He was mired in the throes of boredom, and only a particularly enticing murder would save 221B Baker Street from total destruction.

And then there was Sherlock on the roof of the hospital, on the edge, a dark shadow against the grieving sky, his voice broken and rough on the other end of the phone line.

"John, this is my note. That's what people do, isn't it? Leave notes."

Desperation and shock and disbelief and John can't, _can't._

"Keep your eyes on me."

And John did, kept his eyes locked on the – _no, God, please_ – falling _falling _figure, dark coat spread like wings, as if he were flying – but no, he's _plummeting_ –

And then the ground rushed toward John, smashed him, left him cold. The world tilted, insane, and there was a fuzziness in his head, a ringing in his ears. He staggered back to unsteady feet. Slipping, stumbling, disoriented, all he could see was the crumpled shape on the pavement.

"Sher . . . Sherlock," he breathed.

Hot blood streaming, vibrant among matted curls. Hot blood spilling, tracking past mistyglass eyes no longer blazing. Hot blood pooling, staining rain-painted pavement.

There were people stopping him, people blocking him from the body - _Sherlock's_ body - but no no it _can't_ be - a genius trick, there was no other possibility -

"Let me through, he's my friend . . ." His voice was breaking. Tears in his throat, sighing out in his words - no, because it wasn't real -

And he felt for a pulse, reaching for the too-white wrist, fingers tight because_ it has to be there._

Nothing.

Nothing. No thrumming beat against his skin, not even a flutter. A heartbreaking nothing, that absence. When they finally pulled him away John could still feel that aching nothing in his fingertips.

A numbed horror paralyzing.

_No_.

"Doctor Watson."

John blinks awake; he's stiff and groggy and there's grit in the corners of his eyes. There is still a stuffiness in his head, a drowsiness loitering in the weight of his eyelids. He can't remember what woke him.

"John."

Then he realizes.

_Damn_.

He swipes a hand over his eyes and rubs the sleep from them. "Hell - Sarah. I'm so sorry. Long night." He's fallen asleep at the clinic. Again.

He can't meet her eyes, still so careful - _pitying_ - since the fall, watching him as if he'll shatter, crack and crumble into a thousand pieces before her eyes. And damn it, he doesn't need that.

Forcing out a charming smile, he makes his excuses. He feels the muscles pulling with uncomfortable clarity.

Satisfied, she leaves; her exit is full of backward glances.

He reaches for his pocket and his fingers brush soft velvet. The small box is a comforting weight in his hand. A wave of cold over his stomach, a rush of sizzling blood to his head and _God, he is excited. _John remembers Mary's warm breath against his skin and thinks, _Tonight_.

John flicks the drizzle from his eyes, rainsoaked. The weak London sunlight seems grimy and dull through the watery haze. And not a taxi in sight. He tries not to remember how Sherlock had once been able to hail a cab from seemingly nowhere. Grumbling, trying and failing to ignore the panging in his chest, John stomps his way down the pavement. He checks his pocket fretfully, reassuring himself at the touch of the soft box, rolling it in his palm.

"John."

He freezes.

_No_.

An impossible voice.

_**No.**_

A voice last heard under a similar grieving sky. Broken and rough.

A voice he was never supposed to hear again. A dead man's voice.

The voice of Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
